BANGKOK — Nineteen-year-old Nicolene Pichapa Limsnukan Saturday night was crowned Miss Thailand World.
Nicolene, a business student at the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce, won the annual pageant in Bangkok after she was eliminated from the stage in June at Miss Universe Thailand.
She will represent Thailand in December at the Miss World pageant in Sanya, China.
Praewwanit Ruangthong, 26, and Helena Busch, 22, were the runner-ups.
SAMUT PRAKAN — Down the road he was led, forced to sell food. Two mahouts were driving the 10-year-old elephant when he fell through a makeshift drainage cover. As the scared animal fell in, so did nearby electric wires, electrocuting the animal. He died an hour later.
On Saturday, the day after, police filed criminal charges of animal cruelty and illegal transport against the two mahouts.
A large rescue effort was mounted after all four of the elephant’s legs fell into the meter-wide drain. Rescue workers used a mobile crane to lift it out and contacted the provincial livestock office, which sent a vet team. When the elephant fell unconscious and stopped breathing, the vets performed CPR but couldn’t save it.
One of the two mahouts, 15-year-old Pansa Yanamkham, told police they had been renting the elephant for many months from its owner in Surin province.
Preliminary investigation suggested the electric cables were from a nearby restaurant.
Padej Laithong, director of the regional conservation department, said the elephant was microchipped, and the Samut Prakan livestock will perform a DNA test to confirm whether it matches registration data recorded for all legally owned elephants.
The elephant was returned to its owner in Surin for a funeral under supervision of the livestock department.
Police have filed four charges against both mahouts, including illegally transporting an animal and animal cruelty. The owner, whose name has not been released, also faces illegal transport charges.
WASHINGTON — Nature expresses its fury in sundry ways. Two deadly storms — Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut — roared ashore on the same day, half a world apart, but the way they spread devastation was as different as water and wind.
Storms in the western Pacific generally hit with much higher winds and the people who live in their way are often poorer and more vulnerable, Princeton University hurricane and climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi said Saturday. That will likely determine the type of destruction.
Mangkhut made landfall Friday on the northeastern tip of Luzon island in the Philippines with top-of-the-scale Category 5 winds of 165 mph. Florence had weakened to a Category 1 storm with 90 mph winds by the time it arrived at North Carolina’s coast.
Yet a day after landfall the faster-moving Mangkhut was back out over open water — weakened, but headed across the South China Sea toward China. Florence, meanwhile, was still plodding across South Carolina at a pace slower than a normal person walks. By Saturday morning, it had already dumped more than 76 centimeters of rain, a record for North Carolina.
Experts say Mangkhut may well end up being the deadlier storm. As of Saturday afternoon, the death count in the Philippines was a bit higher, although still far below that of other storms that have hit the disaster-prone island nation. And with Mangkhut now headed toward the densely populated southeast coast of China, it is likely to cause more death and destruction. But watery Florence’s insured loses total will eventually be higher, Ernst Rauch, head of climate research for the world’s largest reinsurer Munich Re, told German media.
That’s because of a combination of geography, climatic conditions and human factors.
The western Pacific has two-and-a-half times more storms that reach the minimum hurricane strength of 74 mph. It has three-and-a-half times more storms that reach major hurricane strength of 111 mph, and three times more accumulated energy out of those hurricanes, an index that measures not just strength and number of storms but how long they last, according to more than 65 years of storm data.
So far this year there have been 23 named storms in the western Pacific and 10 in the Atlantic, both regions more than 30 percent busier than average years. Hurricanes and typhoons are the same type of storm; both are tropical cyclones, but those that occur in the Pacific west of the International Date Line are called typhoons.
The water in the western Pacific is warmer, and warm water fuels storms. There are also only a few pieces of land to get in the way and weaken them, said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy.
“If we are ever going to have a Category 6 (a speculated-on level that’s above current measurement tools), the western Pacific is where it’s going to be,” said meteorologist Ryan Maue of weathermodels.com.
The Philippines tends to get hit nearly every year, the Carolinas far less frequently though with lots of close calls, Maue said. That shows another big difference in the storms. Mangkhut formed further south and stayed south — over warmer water. Florence was out of the tropics when it hit land.
Because of that, Florence was weakened by the dry air and upper level winds of the higher latitudes. Not so the more southerly Mangkhut, which Maue said, “essentially had a perfect environment to intensify to a Category 5 and stay there.”
“Mangkhut and Florence are certainly different animals,” said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach. Because Florence is moving so slowly, he said, it will dump more rain than Mangkhut, which is named for the Thai word for the mangosteen fruit.
Both storms have lasted a long time, especially Florence which formed all the way over near Africa 15 days before landfall, McNoldy said. Both storms cover a large area, but Mangkut still dwarfs Florence. Mangkhut’s tropical storm force winds stretched more than 325 miles from the center, while Florence’s spread about 195 miles, Klotzbach said.
Economics also play a role in a storm’s impact. As a developing country, the Philippines is much poorer than the southeastern United States, which means houses tend to be less sturdy and first responders less well equipped, among other factors. This is one reason why, when disaster does strike, the effects can be devastating. In 2013, one of the most powerful storms on record, Typhoon Haiyan, killed 7,300 people and displaced more than 5 million when it swept across the islands of the central Philippines.
Straddling the famous Pacific Ring of Fire, the Philippines is also bedeviled by volcanoes and earthquakes, and while there are considerable patches of poverty in North and South Carolina, it is not the same as the rural area where Mangkhut hit.
Munich Re’s Rauch said about 30 to 50 percent of storm damage is usually insured in the United States but often less than 10 percent in developing countries, meaning nine-tenths of the people hit will end up shouldering a bigger economic burden.
In the United States, “you can’t move houses, but people can move out of the way,” reflecting mounting damages from storms and often lower losses in life, Vecchi said.
As the world warms from the burning of fossil fuels, the globe will see both more extremely intense storms like Mangkhut and wetter storms like Florence, Vecchi said.
Story: Seth Borenstein
BANGKOK — Thai police promised to step up a crackdown on recruiting agents supplying illegal workers to South Korea, weeks after the Seoul government reportedly mulled an end to visa waivers for Thai travelers.
A woman was arrested Friday for allegedly operating an illegal international recruiting service on Facebook. The chief of metro police division 1 said the computer crime police force is now monitoring such illegal online recruiting, which has damaged the image of Thai tourists.
Read: Thailand’s ‘Little Ghosts’ in Korea Scorned at Home
Maj. Gen. Senit Samransamruatkit said Sutthakorn Sutthithanaorn, 34, operates a page called “South Korea Jobs by Jadezy” which for four months has been posting about jobs in South Korea, including work in agriculture, restaurants, massage and other work that turned out to be prostitution.
The page could not be found Saturday afternoon on Facebook.
Senit said Sutthakorn turned herself in and denied all allegations. He said the investigation found that she received up to 25,000 baht in commission per worker.
South Korean new agency Chosun Ilbo reported late last month that the Korean Justice Ministry was considering an end to visa exemptions to counter the influx of illegal workers, a move it said was objected to by its Foreign Ministry.
The Thai government later said the visa waiver would remain in effect. It however acknowledged the problem, saying that the number of illegal Thai workers in South Korea has spiked in recent months.
Working in South Korea has long been popular among Thai people due to better pay. It has fueled the recruiting business, easily found online by searching for the term adopted for such migrant workers, who are known as phee noi, or little ghosts.
Senit said the computer crime police force has launched an investigation targeting those responsible for the surge of undocumented workers by “misleading people that working in South Korea is easy and well-paid, and that they can overstay the visa waiver period without having to worry about the law.”
He added that more than 10 other similar pages are now under surveillance.
BANGKOK — Little is known about a Thai company the US government announced rare sanctions against late Friday night for servicing an Iranian airline accused of aiding terrorist groups.
My Aviation Co. Ltd. appears to be one of many small players in Thai aviation, operating as an airline sales agent. Lacking even a company website, its name might have remained off the radar if not for serious accusations from the US Treasury.
Read: US Accuses Thai Company of Aiding Terror-Linked Iran Airline
Calls to the office Saturday afternoon went unanswered. Kosol Surinandha, who is identified on LinkedIn as managing director of the company, did not reply to emailed inquiries as of publication time. The Thai government has yet to issue any statement regarding the sanctions.
Business databases online list the company as being founded in 2008 with an office in the Silom area, a major business hub in Bangkok.
Little other information could be found, but the details are in line with reports about it in an outlet called Muslim Thaipost several years ago.
In May 2011, it reported the official opening of a new office for a joint venture between Mahan Air and My Aviation, a ceremony attended by the former Iranian Ambassador and Civil Aviation Authority director.
Mahan Air, a private Iranian airline, has been sanctioned by the US authorities on many grounds, including allegedly supplying “material” to the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad and transporting weapons for Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The primary US concern seems to be with Mahan, with My Aviation being targeted for providing it with services. The Treasury statement said it froze the assets of a Malaysian travel company called Mihan Travel & Tourism in July for the same reason.
My Aviation was accused for indirectly supporting terrorism by providing “cargo services to Mahan Air, to include freight booking,” which the Treasury Department said violates US law, including an executive order signed days after the 9/11 attack. Its assets in the United States therefore were blocked and Americans are barred from doing business with it.
In a 2012 interview, Kosol told Muslim Thaipost that his company was in charge of managing marketing affairs in Thailand for Mahan Air which “is not familiar with the Asian markets,” and said his team was able to increase Mahan Air flights between Tehran to Thailand from two to 13 per week.
He added in the interview that his company would help boost Iranian tourism and trade industry in Thailand.
Mahan Air’s website now lists six weekly flights to Bangkok and seasonal flights to Phuket.
LOS ANGELES — A Colombian drug kingpin who participated in a violent ring that used planes, speedboats and submarines to smuggle hundreds of millions of dollars in cocaine in an operation stretching to Thailand faced federal trafficking charges Friday in a Los Angeles courtroom, prosecutors said.
Victor Hugo Cuellar-Silva is among nearly four dozen defendants, including four in Thai custody, charged in a vast conspiracy to ship tons of cocaine from South America through Mexico to the U.S.
The indictment unsealed Thursday was unique in targeting people throughout the drug distribution chain from the source of where the coke was produced in Colombia to investors in Mexico, transportation coordinators, houses where the drugs were stashed and to large scale distributors in the U.S., federal prosecutors said.
Cuellar-Silva, who was extradited Thursday from Colombia, was a high-ranking member of the drug ring headed by Mexican fugitive Angel Humberto Chavez-Gastelum, who is one of the most-wanted drug traffickers in the world, prosecutors said.
Chavez-Gastelum and his son, Alonso Jaime Gastelum-Salazar, are also charged in the indictment with two counts of murder in Mexico. One of the victims was tortured and dismembered, and the grisly act was shot on video obtained by investigators, prosecutors said.
“This drug ring has spread death and misery across the Americas and to other parts of the world, which makes this case among the most significant drug trafficking cases ever brought in this district,” U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said.
Authorities seized more than 3,500 kilograms of cocaine with a street value over USD$500 million during the three-year investigation.
The seizures included cocaine recovered after a plane was shot down by the Venezuelan military and crashed in the Caribbean, Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Barron said.
Other drugs seized included nearly a ton of cocaine floating in bales off the coast of Tumaco, Colombia, and more than 700 kilograms of cocaine and over 30 kilograms of methamphetamines seized in a Tijuana, Mexico, house.
The indictment charged 47 people in the drug operation. Seven defendants were arrested in the U.S. on Thursday, four were in custody in Thailand and about a half-dozen were facing extradition from Colombia. The others remained at large.
Cuellar-Silva pleaded not guilty and was held in custody, Barron said. A defense lawyer representing him said he had no comment.
If convicted of the charges, Cuellar-Silva and Chavez-Gastelum face up to life in prison, prosecutors said.
TUGUEGARAO, Philippines — Typhoon Mangkhut slammed into the Philippines’ northeastern coast early Saturday, its ferocious winds and blinding rain ripping off tin roof sheets and knocking out power, and plowed through the agricultural region at the start of the onslaught.
The typhoon, which is driving a storm front expected to hit Bangkok later today, made landfall before dawn in the coastal town of Baggao in Cagayan province on the northern tip of Luzon Island, a breadbasket of flood-prone rice plains and mountain provinces often hit by landslides. More than 5 million people were at risk from the storm, which the Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center downgraded from a super typhoon but still punching powerful winds and gusts equivalent to a category 4 Atlantic hurricane.
There were no immediate reports of major damages or casualties in the region, where a massive evacuation from high-risk areas was carried out over two days.
Read: Storm of Nerds, Rain to Descend on Siam Saturday
Associated Press journalists in a hotel in Cagayan’s capital city of Tuguegarao saw tin roof sheets and other debris hurtle through the air and store signs crash to the ground. Cars shook as wind gusts pummeled a parking lot.
With a huge rain cloud band 900 kilometers wide, combined with seasonal monsoon rains, the typhoon dumped intense rain that could set off landslides and flash floods. Storm warnings have been raised in almost all the provinces across the Luzon, including the capital, Manila, restricting sea and air travel.
A few hours after landfall, the eye of the typhoon was nearing the western coast of Luzon facing the South China Sea.
Before it hit land, Mangkhut packed sustained winds of 205kph and gusts of up to 255kph, forecasters said. Even if the typhoon weakens slightly after slamming ashore, its winds will remain very destructive, government forecaster Rene Paciente said.
“It can lift cars, you can’t stand, you can’t even crawl against that wind,” Paciente told reporters late Friday in Manila.
In Tuguegarao, residents braced for the typhoon’s fury by reinforcing homes and buildings and stocking up on food.
“It was busy earlier in the hardware store and people were buying wood, nails, tin wire, plywood and umbrellas,” said Benjamin Banez, who owns a three-story hotel where workers were busy hammering up wooden boards to protect glass panels.
In 2016, a super typhoon wrought heavy damage to Banez’s hotel and the rest of Cagayan.
Ninia Grace Abedes abandoned her bamboo hut and hauled her four children to a school building serving as an emergency shelter. The 33-year-old laundrywoman said the 2016 typhoon blew away their hut, which they abandoned before the storm hit.
“If we didn’t, all of us would be dead,” Abedes said.
More than 15,300 people had been evacuated in northern provinces by Friday afternoon, the Office of Civil Defense said.
Concerns over massive storm surges that could be whipped inland by the typhoon’s winds prompted wardens to move 143 detainees from a jail in Cagayan’s Aparri town to nearby towns, officials said.
The typhoon hit at the start of the rice and corn harvesting season in Cagayan, a major agricultural producer, prompting farmers to scramble to save what they could of their crops, Cagayan Gov. Manuel Mamba said. The threat to agriculture comes as the Philippines tries to cope with rice shortages.
After the Philippines, the Hong Kong Observatory predicts Mangkhut will aim at the Chinese mainland early Monday south of Hong Kong and north of the island province of Hainan. Though it is likely to weaken from a super typhoon to a severe typhoon, it will still pack sustained winds of 175kph, it said.
The observatory warned of rough seas and frequent heavy squalls, urging residents of the densely populated financial hub to “take suitable precautions and pay close attention to the latest information” on the storm.
The gambling enclave of Macau, near Hong Kong, suffered catastrophic flooding during Typhoon Hato last August that left 10 dead and led to accusations of corruption and incompetence at its meteorological office.
On the Chinese mainland, the three southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan are coordinating preparations, including suspending transport and moving people to shelter inland, the national meteorological agency reported.
Guangdong, China’s manufacturing hub, has set up 3,777 shelters, while more than 100,000 residents and tourists have been moved to safety or sent home.
The province has recalled more than 36,000 fishing boats to port, while train services between the cities of Zhanjiang and Maoming have been suspended and all ferry services between Guangdong and Hainan have been put on hold. Fujian province to the north of Guangdong is also closing beaches and tourist sites, the agency reported.
Philippine forecasters said the shifting typhoon could possibly blow toward Vietnam after it exits late Saturday or early Sunday.
In an emergency meeting Thursday, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte asked Cabinet officials from the north to help oversee disaster-response work and told reporters it was too early to consider seeking foreign aid.
“If it flattens everything, maybe we need to have some help,” he said.
Mangkhut, the Thai word for mangosteen fruit, is the 15th storm this year to batter the Philippines, which is hit by about 20 a year and is considered one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries.
Typhoon Haiyan left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened villages, swept ships inland and displaced more than 5 million in the central Philippines in 2013.
WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has denied an allegation of sexual misconduct from when he was in high school, seeking to defuse a potential threat to his confirmation as a handful of key senators remained silent on whether they would vote for him.
In a statement released by the White House Friday, Kavanaugh said: “I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
Senate Republicans insist Kavanaugh’s confirmation remains on track. But the allegation has inflamed an already intense political battle over President Donald Trump’s nominee. It also pushes the #MeToo movement into the court fight, less than two months before congressional elections that have seen a surge of female Democratic candidates.
The New Yorker magazine reported that the alleged incident took place at a party when Kavanaugh, now 53, was attending Georgetown Preparatory School. The woman making the allegation attended a nearby school.
The magazine says the woman sent a letter about the allegation to Democrats. A Democratic aide and another person familiar with the letter confirmed Friday to The Associated Press that the allegation is sexual in nature. Two other people familiar with the matter confirmed it concerned an incident alleged to have occurred in high school. They were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The AP has not confirmed the details of the incident alleged in The New Yorker’s account. The New Yorker did not name the woman.
Rallying to Kavanaugh’s defense, 65 women who knew him in high school issued a letter saying Kavanaugh has “always treated women with decency and respect.” The letter was circulated by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” wrote the women, who said most of them had attended all-girl high schools in the area. “For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.”
The show of support for Kavanaugh was organized by his former law clerks. Three women reached by the AP said they were first asked to sign the letter on Thursday.
Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he won’t let Kavanaugh’s confirmation be stalled by the allegation, which he called “wholly unverifiable.”
“Every accuser deserves to be heard. But a process of verification is also necessary,” Hatch said.
The swift pushback comes after the committee’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, notified federal investigators about information she received on the nominee.
Feinstein won’t disclose the information publicly, but the FBI confirmed it has included it in Kavanaugh’s background file at the committee, now available confidentially to all senators.
Kavanaugh’s nomination has divided the Senate, and the new information complicates the process, especially as key Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, are under enormous pressure from outside groups seeking to sway their votes on grounds that a Justice Kavanaugh might vote to undercut the Roe v. Wade ruling. One activist group favoring abortion choice, NARAL, called on Kavanaugh to withdraw from consideration.
The Judiciary Committee, which has finished confirmation hearings for Kavanagh, still plans to vote next Thursday on whether to recommend that he be confirmed by the full Senate, a spokesman said.
The White House called Feinstein’s move an “11th hour attempt to delay his confirmation.”
Collins held an hourlong phone call with Kavanaugh on Friday, her spokeswoman confirmed. It had been a previously scheduled follow-up to an initial visit that Kavanaugh made to her office in August. It was not immediately clear if they discussed the new information.
If Collins or Murkowski should vote for Kavanaugh, he is likely to be confirmed. Every other Republican in the Senate is expected to vote yes — and some Democrats from Trump-won states may join them — though it remains to be seen if the misconduct allegation will cost him any support.
Feinstein said in a statement Thursday that she “received information from an individual concerning the nomination.” She said the person “strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision.”
The FBI confirmed that it received the information Wednesday evening and included it in Kavanaugh’s background file, which is maintained as part of his nomination. The agency said that is its standard process.
Feinstein’s statement that she had “referred the matter to federal investigative authorities” jolted Capitol Hill and threatened to disrupt what had been a steady path toward confirmation for Kavanaugh by Republicans eager to see the conservative judge on the court.
A spokeswoman for Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., declined to confirm reports that the congresswoman had forwarded a letter containing the allegations to Feinstein. The spokeswoman said the office has a confidentiality policy regarding casework for constituents.
A White House spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said the FBI has vetted Kavanaugh “thoroughly and repeatedly” during his career in government and the judiciary.
The allegation against Kavanaugh prompted a public statement from Anita Hill, who famously accused Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings in 1991. He denied those allegations and was confirmed.
Hill, who is now a professor at Brandeis University, urged the Senate to put in place a process for people to come forward.
“Even in the #MeToo era, it remains incredibly difficult to report harassment, abuse or assault by people in power,” she said.
BANGKOK — A construction engineer faces prosecution for a crane collapse Friday in the Silom area that injured three people, according to a city official.
An investigation found that the crane which came crashing down during morning rush hour in Sala Daeng Road was incorrectly installed. Bangrak district chief Pakaporn Sa-nguansak said the contractor responsible for the apartment building construction site contacted police and pledged to compensate the damages, estimated to run up to 10 million baht.
Read: At Least 3 Injured When Crane Collapses in Silom
A woman was seriously injured when the crane crushed her car. Two men also received minor injuries. It also damaged five trees, 10 utility poles, three cars, two buildings and nearby sidewalks.
Thanawadee Kaewrawang, a fruit vendor, said an electrical pole across from where she sells was knocked down, but she and her customers found cover in time. She added that the area is normally very busy but there were fewer pedestrians at the time.
The crane has been removed and the road is open to traffic as normal this morning, but clean up and repairs continue for the fallen trees and affected infrastructure, including internet and phone lines.
Pakaporn said the Department of Public Works would press charges against the head engineer, whose name was not released. City Hall will seek compensation for the damaged public property from Kiatprasert Marketing, the contractor.
She added that the construction work had been permitted by the authorities.
Siriwat Chaichana of the Engineering Institute of Thailand said the 27-meter crane was mounted to a structure that may not have been sturdy enough to support its weight, causing it to come crashing down.
He said workers there told him that the crane was only recently installed for the current phase of the construction, and that his organization will investigate whether it was being used properly by a licensed operator.
Lt. Col. Jetsada Khumsastra said the unnamed Burmese crane operator fled the scene after the accident and is still on the run.
Update: A previous version of this story identified the crane operator as Wirak Reuan, but police now say he wasn’t operating it at the time of the accident.
BANGKOK — The U.S. government on Friday imposed sanctions on a Thai company it says provides services to an Iranian airline that Washington accuses of supporting terrorist activities directed by Iran’s government.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that My Aviation Co. Ltd., headquartered in Bangkok, “provides cargo services to Mahan Air, to include freight booking,” as well as passenger booking services. Mahan Air’s website lists six weekly flights to the Thai capital, Bangkok.
Read: Thai Aviation Firm Sanctioned by US is Small Player
It said the privately owned Iranian airline “has routinely flown fighters and materiel to Syria to prop up the Assad regime, which has contributed to mass atrocities in the country and the displacement of millions of innocent civilians.”
Treasury targets Thai company supporting Iranian airline Mahan Airhttps://t.co/BPLzWwP3Ik
— Treasury Department (@USTreasury) September 14, 2018
The sanctions order blocks the Thai company’s assets in the United States and generally prohibits U.S. citizens from doing business with it. The order was announced after working hours in Thailand, and no comment was immediately available from My Aviation.
“Mahan Air continues to fly into Syria every week, even as millions of innocent civilians in Idlib province are under threat of imminent attack from the murderous Assad regime and its backers in Iran and Russia. Treasury is cutting off yet another service provider acting on behalf of Mahan Air, a sanctioned airline that transports soldiers and supplies to Assad and fuels terrorist activities across the region,” the statement quoted Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as saying.
“This Thailand-based company has disregarded numerous U.S. warnings, issued publicly and delivered bilaterally to the Thai government, to sever ties with Mahan Air,” Mnuchin said. “This action should serve as a warning that the U.S. is intent on ensuring that the aviation industry ceases providing services to, and profiting from, this terrorist-affiliated airline.”
The United States has sanctioned Mahan Air for multiple instances of supporting groups it designated as terrorists, including transporting weapons and personnel for Hizballah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The sanctions order against My Aviation was applied under two Treasury Department programs, covering Global Terrorism Sanctions Regulations and Iranian Financial Sanctions Regulations.
One other Thailand-based company has been sanctioned under the same programs.
“Asian Aviation Logistics also acts for or on behalf of Mahan Air and helps the airline evade sanctions by making payments on behalf of Mahan Air for the purchase of engines and other equipment,” the Treasury Department said in 2014. “Asian Aviation Logistics also employs at least one Mahan Air official.”
